Bridgeport ballots counted; Malloy wins

Brittany Lyte, Connecticut Post

Brittany Lyte, Ken Dixon and Timothy Loh, Staff Writers

Published 10:46 am, Friday, November 5, 2010

As of 7 a.m. Friday, November 5, 2010, -- 59 hours after Bridgeport's election polls were supposed to have closed -- the team of vote counters were still adding up tallies in the Registrar of Voters office in McLevy Hall.
Photo: Cathy Zuraw

As of 7 a.m. Friday, November 5, 2010, -- 59 hours after Bridgeport's election polls were supposed to have closed -- the team of vote counters were still adding up tallies in the Registrar of Voters office in McLevy Hall.
Photo: Cathy Zuraw

As of 7 a.m. Friday, November 5, 2010, -- 59 hours after Bridgeport's election polls were supposed to have closed -- the team of vote counters were still adding up tallies in the Registrar of Voters office in McLevy Hall.
Photo: Cathy Zuraw

As of 7 a.m. Friday, November 5, 2010, -- 59 hours after Bridgeport's election polls were supposed to have closed -- the team of vote counters were still adding up tallies in the Registrar of Voters office in McLevy Hall. Witnesses from both sides were there to keep track of the count as the numbers were tallied up.
Photo: Cathy Zuraw

Chris Covucci, a state field director for the Foley campaign spoke after Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch at the early morning news conference Friday, November 5, 2010. "We think the tallying process was flawed," said Covucci, "It's inaccurate to say that this is the final number."
Photo: Cathy Zuraw

Democratic candidate Dan Malloy addresses the media in the Old Judiciary Committee Room in the State Capitol with lieutenant governor candidate Nancy Wyman and Tim Bannon, who Malloy has appointed to lead his transition team, in Hartford, Conn. on Wednesday November 3, 2010. Malloy has been declared the winner in the gubernatorial race by Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.
Photo: Kathleen O'Rourke

News 8 Chief Capitol Correspondent Mark Davis reads a newspaper while waiting for a press conference to begin at the Capitol Builing in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 04, 2010. The media were waiting for Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz to give press conference about the election results in the race for governor.
Photo: Christian Abraham

The Capitol Building in downtown Hartford, Conn. looks quiet on Thursday November 04, 2010. It was anything but quiet inside, as Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz announced and delayed a press conference on the problems surrounding Tuesday's election and the pending results in the race for governor.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz held a press conference about the controversy surrounding Tuesday's election and the pending results in the race for governor. Bysiewicz reported that Bridgeport still hasn't sent in their completed return counts.The scene unfolded at Capitol Building in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 04, 2010.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz held a press conference about the controversy surrounding Tuesday's election and the pending results in the race for governor. Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is delaying the declaration of the official winner. The scene unfolded at Capitol Building in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 4, 2010.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is delaying what is expected to be a declaration that Democrat Dan Malloy defeated Republican Tom Foley in the governor's race. "We are waiting for Bridgeport," she told reporters expecting to hear a resolution of the hotly contested governor's election. "I am doing my job, and I am just waiting for the registrars to do their job -- in Bridgeport." At the registrars' offices in Bridgeport, workers said ballots are still being counted. The press conference was held at the Capitol Building in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 4, 2010.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz held a press conference about the controversy surrounding Tuesday's election and the pending results in the race for governor. Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is delaying the declaration of the official winner. The scene unfolded at Capitol Building in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 4, 2010.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz conducts a news conference at the state Capitol in Hartford, Conn., Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. Bysiewicz says she does not have the final vote totals in the disputed governor's race because of a delay in the state's largest city, Bridgeport. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Photo: Jessica Hill, AP

Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz conducts a news...

Mark Boughton, Republican candidate for Connecticut Lt. Governor, answers questions from the media in the lobby of Goodwin Square in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 04, 2010. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is holding up what is expected to be a declaration that Malloy defeated Foley in the governor’s race.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Mark Boughton, Danbury Mayor and Republican candidate for Connecticut Lt. Governor, answers questions from the media in the lobby of Goodwin Square in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 4, 2010. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is holding up what is expected to be a declaration that Malloy defeated Foley in the governor’s race.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Mark Boughton, Republican candidate for Connecticut Lt. Governor, answers questions from the media in the lobby of Goodwin Square in downtown Hartford, Conn. on Thursday November 04, 2010. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars is holding up what is expected to be a declaration that Malloy defeated Foley in the governor’s race.
Photo: Christian Abraham

Santa Ayala, the Democratic registrar of voters in Bridgeport (standing), works with election moderators as they work to verifying the election moderator reports from each of the the city's 25 voting precincts Thursday afternoon, Nov. 4th, 2010.
Photo: Ned Gerard

Santa Ayala, the Democratic registrar of voters in Bridgeport (standing left), confers with election moderators Brenda Young (center) and Julie Catania-Pizighelli as they work to verifying the election moderator reports from each of the the city's 25 voting precincts Thursday afternoon, Nov. 4th, 2010.
Photo: Ned Gerard

BRIDGEPORT -- An overnight tabulation of Bridgeport's ballots in the governor's race appears to have brought a razor-thin victory to Democrat Dan Malloy, but Republican Tom Foley said he is not ready to concede the race.

"I think it's very unfortunate that the people of the state had to wait three day," Foley said at a Hartford news conference, suggesting a recount might be necessary. "Connecticut deserves better from its public officials."

He said he won't make a decision about a legal challenge of the results until final totals can be agreed upon. He said that reported "irregularities" in Bridgeport should also be reviewed.

"We're going to take whatever time it takes to get there," he said. "It may take a recount to get that certainty. Right now I'm not confident with the results."

Malloy received 17,973 votes in Bridgeport while Foley got 4,099, which wipes out the lead Foley had amassed statewide. While numbers posted on the state's election website and those listed by The Associated Press are slightly different, it appears Malloy now has a more-than 5,000 vote advantage out of 1.1 million ballots cast.

Such an edge would surpass the 2,000-vote threshold that automatically triggers a statewide recount.

In Bridgeport, officials were trying to move past the Election Day fiasco.

"I can assure you that every vote was counted," said Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch at an early morning news conference Friday. "Every paper vote was counted, there are no hanging chads."

When asked why the numbers were being released early Friday morning before the post 8 p.m. votes had been tallied, Finch said "they will not be of consequence, it appears. We didn't see any point."

The margin of Malloy's victory would appear to make it difficult for Foley to demand a recount.

Chris Healy, chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, said he was still concerned about the way Bridgeport officials handled the election count. "I'm outraged that Mayor Bill Finch is the new registrar of voters and apparently the secretary of the state as well," Healy said in a phone interview.

The Bridgeport vote tallies will now be submitted to Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who will declare the unofficial winner of the race. The vote totals show that 33.9 percent of Bridgeport's eligible voters cast ballots.

Av Harris, communications director for Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, said Friday morning that by 9 a.m. the office had not received Bridgeport's report, which would be either faxed or delivered to the office by messenger. "We expect it this morning, then we'll plug in the data, tabulate it, check it, double check it and triple check it, before releasing the results," Harris said.

From the Malloy camp, Dan Kelly, campaign manager said, "We've been confident that Dan Malloy and Nancy Wyman would be declared the winners. We'll wait for the Secretary of the State to make it official, and will then have more to say."

The vote totals posted earlier on the secretary of the state's website, which include totals for all of the state's municipalities except Bridgeport, showed that Foley led Malloy, 556,787 to 548,378.

A Foley campaign representative who sat in on the overnight counting, noted that the Bridgeport tallies had changed during the tally process.

"We think the tallying process was flawed," said Chris Covucci, a state field director for the Foley campaign. "It's inaccurate to say that this is the final number."

An ovenlike yellow lunch room inside the Registrar of Voters office was the site of the three-day vote count, and recount, that launched at midnight after Election Day.

A bag of uncounted ballots found in McLevy Hall earlier had plunged the already chaotic governor's election into further confusion, prompted a new round of political accusations and delayed until Friday the expected announcement from state officials that Malloy had triumphed.

Even as Foley's campaign demanded the ballots be taken by State Police to Hartford for counting by a neutral authority, city officials insisted the existence of the ballots previously had been disclosed and that Bridgeport election workers would count them Thursday night.

The ballots from the John F. Kennedy Campus were never tallied because poll workers refused to count them on election night, according to Richard Albrecht, an attorney for Foley's campaign. City officials and counting observers said there were 355 ballots in the bag, a small fraction of the more than 20,000-plus ballots cast.

"The existence of these ballots, the number of the ballots, and their location and status were fully disclosed to representatives of the Foley and Malloy campaigns during the evening of the election, and the Secretary of the State's office was also similarly notified," said Bridgeport Deputy City Attorney Arthur Laske. "Any allegation that there were missing, or newly discovered ballots by the attorney for the Foley campaign is entirely incorrect."

Nonetheless, the bag of uncounted ballots was the latest episode that tarnished Bridgeport's beleaguered elections operations. On Election Day, most of the city's 25 precincts ran out of ballots, prompting long lines, angry poll workers and widespread confusion. By order of a state judge, half of the precincts were kept open until 10 p.m.

The 2010 election marked her 30th year as Bridgeport's head moderator.

"The Secretary of the State has ordered you in (to re-count the votes); you have to be escorted by a policeman," Howard told her.

In the previous 40-some hours, Cataniapizighelli had worked with a team of designated counters to hand-tally the city's votes after a ballot shortage turned the local election process into chaos.

As of 7 a.m. Friday -- 59 hours after Bridgeport's election polls were supposed to have closed -- Cataniapizighelli and a team of five other vote counters were still punching at typewriters and penciling in score cards.

An Election Day baby, Julie Cataniapizighelli, 48, has worked the polls every year since her 18th birthday.

"At one point, I was up for 40 hours and 40 minutes straight," she said, kicking out from under a table a swollen ankle. "I've never stayed up that long before."

An ovenlike yellow lunch room inside the Registrar of Voters office was the site of the three-day vote count, and recount, that launched at midnight after Election Day.

The eye of the storm was inside McLevy Hall at 202 State St. with the city's voter ballots, strewn on a lunch table cluttered with ballots, spread sheets, coffee cups and a miniature American flag. Lassoed around six vote counters amped on coffee, tea, donuts and Italian breadsticks was a camp of attorneys representing either the City of Bridgeport, Malloy's campain or Foley's campain. Sandwiched against filing cabinets, a not-to-be-touched table holding election materials and a stove that switched on several times when bodies nudged its dials, a troop of reporters, cameramen and four police officers kept watch, scrutinizing the counting process between yawns.

Earlier Thursday, Bysiewicz said a delay in getting vote tallies from Bridgeport registrars was holding up an expected declaration that Malloy defeated Foley in the governor's race -- what would have been the second such declaration in two days.

"We are waiting for Bridgeport," she told reporters expecting to hear a resolution of the hotly contested governor's election. "I am doing my job, and I am just waiting for the registrars to do their job -- in Bridgeport."

By 6:30 p.m., Bysiewicz had given up.

She said in a statement, "At approximately 5 p.m., our office learned from the Registrar of Voters' office in Bridgeport that it may take several more hours for the head moderator to complete the return from Election Day. By law, this document was required by law to be delivered to our office by 6 p.m. yesterday. As such, we do not anticipate receiving any completed return from Bridgeport this evening."

Around 12:30 a.m. Friday Republicans were calling for the ballot counting to end for the night, saying the counters were too tired and might be making mistakes as a result. They also questioned the practice of counting votes for Malloy in which someone in correctly voted for him on both the Democratic and Working Families party lines as a vote for him as the Working Families party candidate. This could give the party unintended legitimacy, members of the GOP said.

Foley's hopes had been buoyed Wednesday by late tallies from The Associated Press that gave him an 8,400-vote lead with 99 percent of the results in. But sources said that a discrepancy in reports from AP substantially undercounted Malloy's margin of victory in New Haven.

`THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE'

Throughout Thursday, both parties sparred over who had won, lawyers combed through voting tallies in Bridgeport and elsewhere, and the possibility remained that the whole thing might end up in court.

Bysiewicz told reporters that her declaration the previous day of a Malloy victory by 3,100 votes was made after "over the phone" conversations with registrar offices. She said that all of the state's 169 municipalities -- except Bridgeport -- now have filed their return.

An e-mail sent by Bysiewicz's office to registrars across the state at 3:09 p.m. Wednesday, hours after her initial announcement that Malloy had won, suggests her office was still scrambling to amass final, albeit unofficial, numbers.

The e-mail, from Lesley Mara, deputy Secretary of the State, said: "As you know, there is much anticipation surrounding this election, in particular the close governor's race. In order to be able to publish final numbers, we urge you to get your returns in to our office today ."

Sharon Vecchiolla, Democratic registrar of voters in Greenwich, said Thursday she received the e-mail. "Why would you do a press conference in the (early) afternoon to announce that a candidate has won if you don't have all of your official results?" she asked. "I just think it was a little early. I probably would have waited. I just think it was a little bit premature. Why do you want to put the horse before the cart?"

Foley, who said Wednesday he thought he was ahead by 2,000 votes, had expressed frustration his staff was unable to analyze town-by-town results from the state.

FINCH: NO PRESSURE TO KEEP BALLOT COSTS DOWN

Shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday, workers at the Bridgeport registrars' office began the process of examining precinct "moderator reports" that contain voting totals from each of the city's 25 polling places. One aide said it was unclear how long that review would take. After those reports are reviewed, Bridgeport Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala said, the bag of uncounted ballots from the Kennedy Campus will be counted.

Among those in the counting room in McLevy Hall were Ayala, her Republican counterpart, Joseph Borges, several attorneys apparently representing candidates, Trumbull First Selectman Timothy Herbst on behalf of Foley, two city police officers as well as news reporters and photographers.

Ayala, who is at the center of the controversy, was re-elected without opposition Tuesday. She came under fire in 2007 for her handling of a mayoral primary in which 137 voters were discovered to have voted without being crossed off voter lists.

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch has appointed a three-person commission to investigate the ballot shortage. The panel will hold a public meeting on Nov. 16 at 7 p.m., at a venue to be determined, to hear directly from the public about Election Day troubles.

Finch dismissed allegations that budgetary issues drove the number of ballots that were ordered.

"I want to be clear: At no time did the city ask that the registrar spend less money to purchase ballots. We would never let money stand in the way of ensuring that every voter have the chance to exercise his or her inalienable right to vote in a free democracy. For the registrars to even think of using that as an excuse for causing such distress for so many of our residents is indefensible and inexcusable,'' Finch said in a press release issued Thursday.

Republican State Central Committee Chairman Healy is challenging the use of photocopied ballots in Bridgeport with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. Healy last month filed a complaint alleging that two individuals from Bridgeport obtained and distributed more than 250 applications for absentee ballots, listing a vacant lot on North Avenue as their address.

Whether other challenges are filed, either in court or with the commission, remains to be seen.

In Bridgeport, for much of Wednesday Herbst and a battery of other lawyers met with Borges, Bridgeport's outgoing Republican registrar, to explore if there were voting irregularities to form the basis of a lawsuit.

Democrats believe the Republicans are engaged in a fishing expedition, hoping to turn up a few insignificant problems and cast them as evidence of fraud.

"Our system didn't work right, but did correct itself," Finch said Wednesday. "The integrity of this election is as strong as any election."